Kevin Lawrence, commercial manager at Charles Trent, said: “A vehicle was delivered to site and when we came to process it we found a suspicious device in the car.

“We photographed the device and sent it to police who decided to come out.

“They spent an hour looking at the device and then decided to call the bomb squad.

“They arrived and took it away for further investigation.

“We’ve had nothing like this before - we sometimes get an old World War shell that someone has polished up, but not like this.

“The police said that in 15 years of attending incidents like this it was the first time they had to call the bomb squad.”

The Vauxhall Omega in which the device was found

The Omega has been at Charles Trent Cars since March 23 and had come from elsewhere in Rugby.

Inspector Daf Goddard, from Warwickshire Police, said: “Further enquiries are being made to establish why the item was in the vehicle but there was no danger to the public at any point during this incident.

“Staff at the yard rightly called us and we contacted explosives experts as a precautionary measure.

“We would like to thank everyone for their patience while we managed this incident.”